To continue the narrative of the Stansbury expedition. The party advanced up the river and pursued their journey to the Great Salt Lake and there wintered. The following year they returned to the east and on September 21, 1850, reached the left bank of the North Fork of the Platte, at a point near the center of the present Carbon County, Wyoming. Describing the site of their encampment that night, near the bank of the Platte: "The place we now occupy has long been a favorite camp-ground for the numerous war-parties which annually meet in this region to hunt buffalo and one another. Remains of old Indian stockades are met with scattered about among the thickets; and the guide informed us, that four years since there were at one and the same time, upon this one bottom, fifteen or twenty of these forts, constructed by different tribes. Most of them have since been destroyed by fire. As this was the season of the year when we might expect to find them upon their expeditions, we were on the _qui vive_, lest we should be surprised." They remained in camp the following day, Sunday, and that evening entered in the journal: "Several herds of buffalo were seen during the day." The morning of the 23d was warm and cloudy, and the party soon after leaving their camp forded the river "on a ripple, with a depth of eighteen inches." The water was clear, with a pebbly bottom. That this location was frequented by Indians was again indicated by the discovery of another great group of "forts," as told in the narrative: "Immediately above where we crossed, were about twenty Indian forts, or lodges constructed of logs set up endwise, somewhat in the form of an ordinary skin lodge, which had been erected among the timber by different war-parties: they appeared to be very strong, and were ball-proof." (Stansbury, (1), pp. 243-246.) These strongly constructed lodges will at once recall the rather similar structures which stood at some of the Siouan villages, on the Mississippi below the mouth of the Minnesota, during the early years of the last century. On September 27, when about midway across the present Albany County, Wyoming, the expedition encountered a large number of Indians belonging to a village a short distance beyond. These proved to be the Oglala, and during the following day the village was visited by Stansbury, who wrote in the journal: "This village was the largest and by far the best-looking of any I had ever seen. It consisted of nearly one hundred lodges, most of which were entirely new, pitched upon the level prairie which borders on the verdant banks of the Laramie. No regular order seemed to be observed in their position, but each builder appeared to have selected the site for his habitation according to his own fancy.